Battlecry Studios will be based in Austin, Texas; will be run by industry veteran former Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel; studio to work on unannounced project.

Bethesda has announced the establishment of a new Texas-based studio, to be headed by industry veteran and former BioWare Austin vice president Rich Vogel.

Vogel has joined Bethesda.

The new studio--titled Battlecry Studios--will be based in Austin, alongside ZeniMax's Arkane Studios, the developer behind the upcoming title Dishonored. According to Bethesda, Battlecry is still hiring developers for work on an unannounced project.

"We are very pleased to have someone with Rich's vast experience join us at Bethesda," Bethesda Softworks president Vlatko Andonov said. "Rich has a history of building and managing talented development teams and bringing high quality games to market, and we look forward to working with him on a new, exciting project."

Vogel's past experience includes cofounding BioWare Austin in 2005 and serving as executive producer on the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Vogel also worked at 3DO and Sony Online Entertainment, where he brought three other MMORPGs to market, including Meridian 59, Ultima Online, and Star Wars Galaxies.

"I have always admired and respected Bethesda's approach to making great, original games," Vogel said. "It's a belief and passion I share, and I'm looking forward to building a team of high quality developers who want to bring that same commitment and creative energy to the games we'll be creating."

Battlecry Studios is currently hiring for a number of positions, including designers, art directors, programmers and a monetisation designer (a position that hints at the possibility of an online game with a microtransaction model).

Let's face it, people would prefer spending subscription money on Pandaland, no matter how good new MMO's are.

I can't wait for the new Elder Scrolls MMO, god even TOR wasn't a bad MMO i still login and play it sometimes, its actually even better nowadays, crowded and a lot of stuff to do at the endgame.

Still, trying to milk old great franchises under the brand of MMO just doesn't work... People will keep spending their dollars on Pandaland, no matter what others come up with. Developers can't just get this.

So far you have two guys that worked on UO together and maybe more that we have not seen. anyone that has played UO knows how great a MMO it was and understand how much greatness can come from this team coming together.

Wow people see the name BIOWARE and think ME and how this guy is gonna bring great story telling to Bethesda games. Did anybody bother reading the whole article, this guy was given what is possible the easiest job ever. Make a successful Star Wars game. Just the name Star Wars means you have people who want to play it right away, but somehow he screwed it up, not once, but twice. Congratulations Bethesda you have the mastermind behind Star Wars Galaxies and SWTOR coming to work for you, please specify to me what games he makes so I can not pick them up cause I prefer to play games over playing with a steaming handful of crap.

Seems like the people behind BioWare are fleeing EA's grip en masse. Hopefully this will allow Vogel (and other former BioWare members maybe?) access some creativity, freely, and harness some of that to return to the masterful games they were known for.

First Ray and Graig now Vogel.. BioWare is really falling apart after the continuous fiasco games.It really saddens me to witness that but on the other hand it DOES make me happy to see at least that Vogel is gonna keep making games.I can haz my new Single Player RPG now?? :P

I hope these former BioWare talents joining the new studio will change the way they develop a product. SWTOR wasn't really well thought-out. It was destined to fail from the get go. Whatever factors that caused them to make those dubious decisions are hopefully absent in the new studio. Either way, I am sure they all gained lots of know-hows after developing SWTOR.

Haha, Rich Vogel? I wouldn't open an ice cream truck with that idiot in charge. He has been handed the star wars IP and unlimited money twice and somehow managed to fuck it up. I would not hesitate to call him the world's worst game developer. Has Bethesda totally lost their minds?

@SlowMotionKarma@Darkitachi54@MooncalfReviews ea don't have rights at all , They are 3rd side between lucasarts and bioware on star wars Ip. as For whole EA bioware, EA tryng to Ruin bioware but it's not working so much atm .

@Darkitachi54@MooncalfReviews LucasArts certainly has the rights to Star Wars games overall, but EA may have /publishing/ rights to Old Republic games. I'm not sure either way, but maybe that's what Mooncalf was referring to?

@Drummer4Life321 @evil-zodiark @nocoolnamejim @blackothh That might not be the case.

Bioware game developers, who have created awesome games that we know have already quit Bioware itself. New guys running Bioware are making more action oriented, simplified games, instead of RPG's that we know and loved once. I'm not saying its worse, i'm merely comparing what it was like and what it is like now.

We can safely assume that EA slowly devoured Bioware, directing it to a more "profitable" state. Letting Bioware go might have even worse consequences considering Bioware has been feeding off EA for a while now and lost many of its great developers.

@evil-zodiark@nocoolnamejim@blackothh Yeah ME2 was fun but it was streamlined and simplified. That was the model that ME3 was based on, so I guess that started the rot. I just wish Bioware could leave EA in order to make their games free of EA's tampering...

In case it wasn't obvious, my post was directed at Trouvo. In fact, if you had bothered to read it properly, I was not pointing the blame at Vogel or anybody, but rather refuting Trouvo's idiotic statement that TOR was more successful (financially and otherwise) than SWG, when it was clearly not. Really, how dense can you be?

And whilst I'm sure EA did do a horrible job managing this project, as they usually do, that does not absolve Vogel or any of the other TOR leads from playing a part in its failure. When you are handed THE LARGEST BUDGET IN VIDEO GAMING HISTORY, you should have a lot of things at a minimum, things that TOR obviously lacks. The design direction by the lead developers was definitely a significant contribution to the failure of TOR.

@johns9994@jurk182 do you really think vogel is to blame when WE ALL KNOW EA DESTROYED THE KOTOR AND MASS EFFECT SERIES? how dense can you be.......WE ALL KNOW WHAT SOE DID TO SWG......how....dense....can....you...be.....